Small Actions Build Big Confidence

Four years ago I installed a ceiling fan in my bedroom. I’d never tried anything like that before. I was scared and anxious.

When I was done installing the fan, I was beaming with pride. I’d installed a new fan and it worked! It’s always good when something like this works.

And then it happened.

A van and house on fire

Photo by Darn Armfield

One night while Pam and I were sleeping, we were woken up with a loud crackpop, and flames! Yes, flames… They were shooting out of the ceiling fan I installed.

I hopped out of bed. I ran to the light switch. And I flipped the switch quicker than I thought was possible.

The light and sound show subsided. It was over. Yet it wasn’t over.

Talk about a scary event.

As I write this, I’m beaming with pride. I am sitting in my chair thinking about the things I accomplished earlier today and yesterday.

Last night, I finally built up the courage to reinstall a new ceiling fan and light. The process was simple, easy even (once I understood the instructions).

We tested everything and it works.

Then, this morning, I networked a couple of rooms in our house. I cut into our walls. I drilled through floors. And I put holes into the joists of our house. I was nervous but I was confident.

Now, I have a cleaner, nicer looking network in my house.

I feel good. I feel confident.

Small Actions Build Big Confidence

I didn’t start with the new ceiling fan. This happened weeks after I had started doing smaller actions.

My parents had asked me to help them replace the latch on one of their doors. Then it was hanging new blinds. And then it was hanging doors.

Each small step in helping my parents helped me gain more confidence in what I could do around my house. It gave me the confidence to fix what I had broken years ago.

This is how you build confidence. You start with small actions that can build your skills and abilities towards the big, difficult things in your life.

How can you build confidence? You might:

Change your car’s oil. It’s a simple process of draining the oil via the oil plug, removing the oil filter, placing a new oil filter onto the car, replacing the oil plug, and filling the oil back to the proper levels. This can give you the confidence to try something more difficult with your vehicle.

Write a blog article. You may have a desire to become a writer to share your leadership ideas. You may also be scared to share your writing with the world. When I started this blog, I wrote a single blog article. I hid the article for months. Then I released it to the world. Here I am 10 years later and still loving it. By starting with a single post, you can gain the confidence to write more.

Speak up on an unimportant topic. Speaking up can be scary. You don’t know what people are going to do or say. You can start by speaking up about something that’s unimportant. It could be your love for running or how much you like going to the beach. Use these to gain confidence in what you say. Then begin to speak up about bigger and more important topics.

You don’t start out with confidence. You build confidence. Each and every small action you take, you are building your confidence.

Start today with a goal. Set small milestone actions you can take to get there. Each one will build into the next.

Before you know it, you will be confident in the large task you want to complete!

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